Classic @spolsky Post: You Should (Almost) Never Rewrite From Scratch

Netguru

Dec 6, 2013 | 1 min read

The evergreen series continues! It's been almost 13 years since Joel Spolsky - a co-founder of Fog Creek Software and Stack Overflow - has voiced out in such a beautiful manner that complete rewrites are definitely NOT a good idea.

The evergreen series continues! It's been almost 13 years since - has voiced out in such a beautiful manner that complete rewrites are definitely NOT a good idea. In a classic (at least for every web developer) Things You Should Never Do post, Joel describes why the idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd.

Full of memorable tidbits like

We're programmers. Programmers are, in their hearts, architects, and the first thing they want to do when they get to a site is to bulldoze the place flat and build something grand.

it's a must read if you are thinking about getting dirty with a complete rewrite. Well actually, it should be in your reading list even if you don't. Feel free to share your experience with rewriting the code base from scratch in the comments!